Zdeněk Bažant

Who is Zdeněk Bažant?

Zdeněk Pavel Bažant is McCormick School Professor and Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering and Materials Science in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Born in Prague to a geotechnical engineering professor and a sociology PhD, and the grandson of a professor of structural mechanics and former university president, Bažant was the winner of the 1955 Mathematical Olympics. He studied civil engineering at Czech Technical University, where he was first in his class. He was awarded the C.E. degree with the highest distinction in 1960. While working as a bridge engineer for the state consulting firm Dopravoprojekt in Prague, he studied for his PhD in structural mechanics at the Czech Academy of Sciences, which he received in 1963. In his dissertation on concrete creep theory, he developed a new method to analyze fracturing and cracking in concrete structures. He went on to earn a postgraduate diploma in theoretical physics from Charles University in 1966 and attained docent habilitation in concrete structures from ČVUT in 1967.